Ed Engle on Fishing: A gift from the home water

A chunky brown trout caught from the South Platte River tailwater below Spinney Mountain Reservoir

I could say that I decided to fish the South Platte River below Spinney Mountain Reservoir because I've seen more trout there this year than I've seen in a long time and that would be true.

I might also add that I'd recently heard there was a pretty good hatch of Pale Morning Duns happening there and the trout were rising to them with reckless abandon. There were even accounts of trout rising to the tiny mayflies that fly fishers call "tricos," which is short for their genus name, Tricorythodes.

But there was more to it than just the prospect of a good day's fishing.

After close to three weeks of historically destructive wildfires on Colorado's Front Range, I didn't want to think about how fires have impacted my home waters. Unfortunately that's getting increasingly more difficult to do.

Nowadays, I drive through the Hayman burn on my way to the South Platte River tailwater in Cheesman Canyon and the Elevenmile Canyon tailwater just joined the burn club a month ago when the Springer Fire touched its northern bank. Most recently, the Waldo Canyon Fire destroyed the "perfect little stream" that I discovered and reported on in my last Daily Camera column, on June 18.

Nonetheless, I tried not to think about any of that when I checked the Spinney Mountain tailwater statistics the night before I left for the river. The flows had just been increased from 200 cubic feet per second (CFS) to 250 CFS, but that small of a bump probably wouldn't affect the fishing. The weather was shaping up, too. A monsoon wind pattern, which had brought heavy rain and thunderstorms to the Front Range, had moved out and the prediction was for sunny skies with temperatures in the low 70s and 3 mph to 5 mph winds.

My plan was to be on the road no later than 6 a.m. so I could be on the water in time to fish to any trout that might be rising to the female tricos that typically hatch early in the morning and then immediately form mating swarms over the river with the already hatched males. The females then drop their fertilized eggs in the water and fall dead on the surface, where they are easy pickings for the trout.

With any luck, I figured to also fish to the Pale Morning Dun hatch and maybe a small dark caddisfly that is commonly available to the trout this time of year.

Unfortunately, the "plan" changed abruptly when I arrived at the river and found that it was off-color.

My first thought was that water releases from the dam had drastically increased overnight, but the river didn't really look like it was running at much more than 250 CFS. That's when I noticed all the standing water and realized that the heavy rains must have saturated the soil and it was still running off into the river, causing the discoloration. That pretty much ended my vision of a day spent casting delicate dry flies to rising trout.

Considering the conditions, I figured I might as well cut my leader back to 2X and break out my streamer box. I worked streamers for the next hour and didn't get anything close to a strike. I then re-rigged for nymphing and tried dredging various two-fly combinations of big rubber-legged nymph patterns, San Juan worms and chamois leeches trailed with size 18 Gold-ribbed Hares Ears, Copper Johns or beadhead midge larvae patterns all to no avail.

Eventually, I did what I often do when the fishing is tough. I just started walking upstream alongside the river. I might have drifted the nymph rig through a few more spots that looked too good to resist, but I did not move any fish.

When I walk along a river there is always part of me that never gives up hope. I know I was staring at some foam that was eddying in a bend up ahead of me when I saw what looked like a trout's nose poke up out of the water. At about the same time, I saw a mating swarm of tricos moving down toward the water's surface. When I saw the trout's nose poke up again, I knew I wasn't hallucinating.

That trout was sipping spent trico spinners, and if it kept feeding long enough for me to re-rig for dry flies, I would catch it. I knew that.

I quickly built my leader out to a 5X tippet and tied a size 18 Elk Hair Caddis to the end of it. I then tied an 18-inch long section of 6X leader material to the bend the hook and knotted a size 22 spent trico spinner imitation to it. I thought there was a chance that the trout might explode on the Caddis imitation, but it was more likely he would sip down the tiny spent spinner trailer.

The trout did not take my first presentation, but on my second try, the Elk Hair Caddis imitation stuttered just a little in the current. It was not the kind of hesitation that pure physical science predicts, but, rather, the kind of live twitch that signals to the angler that a trout has taken the trailer fly.

I set the hook and was into a chunky brown trout.

After I released the fish, I walked around for another hour or so. Although there were plenty of spent tricos on the water, I never saw another trout rise. It might be that I just happened to be in the right place at the right time when I caught that trout, but I am inclined to take my good fortune that day as a gift from my home water.

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